Lula's son criticizes the exclusion of Marisa Letícia's name in a publication on the president's networks

Youngest son of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), businessman Luís Cláudio Lula da Silva criticized the exclusion of his mother's name, Marisa Letícia, in a publication made on his father's official profile on X (formerly Twitter) in celebration at 44 years of the Workers' Party (PT).

“Unfortunately, some strange things have happened”, wrote Luís Cláudio, to share a post which pointed to the exclusion of Marisa's name. “No one can erase my mother’s story.” After the complaint, Lula's profile reposted the message, this time with the name Marisa Letícia.

Lula's letter was initially published on Friday, the 9th, on the Perseu Abramo Foundation website. The text begins like this: “In the beginning, it was just a scrap of red cloth, which Marisa took and sewed a white star on top.”

The following morning, the text was published on Lula's profile on X, excluding the reference to Marisa: “In the beginning, it was just a piece of red cloth with a white star on top”. In the afternoon, after Luís Cláudio's alert, the publication was deleted and reposted.

Lula's social media accounts are managed by the Communications Secretariat (Secom) of the Presidency of the Republic. When contacted, the Ministry did not respond.

A senior member of the government familiar with the situation argued that the person who published the tweet initially edited it “to reduce the text, without the intention of deleting anything”. “As soon as the edit was noticed, they were advised to redo it,” he added, assuring that there was no request from outside.

However, Lula's profile is X-verified, which means that the characters are unlimited and therefore there is no point in paring down the text. Furthermore, the exclusion of Marisa Letícia's name was the only edit made to the original text. Everything else has been reproduced in full.

Marisa Letícia died in 2017, shortly before Lula was arrested. After leaving prison, the PT member married Rosângela da Silva, known as Janja. The first lady has a distant relationship with the children of the President of the Republic.

Since the beginning of Lula's third term as President, Janja has acted with veto power in the government and even interfered in areas such as the economy, defense and advertising. The first lady has the final say, for example, in institutional government advertisements.